Email -- Wonder Tool or Time Waster?

If you are like me and many others, you can waste many hours a day or a week just reading and answering email. Email can be an important communication tool with your clients, customers, vendors, collaborators, and others. But it can also be a huge waste of time! It can even be a "legitimate" way of avoiding what you don't want to do. And it can make you feel "busy" at work at the same time. What a deal!

I admit to being guilty to subscribing to many ezines, e-courses and other email. The reason I gave myself was that it was important that I see what my colleagues were doing in my field and also to learn more about marketing, sales, multiple streams of income, coaching, etc. So for valid reasons, I signed up for lots of email. Right now in my inbox sits more than a hundred unread emails. This does not include the fifty or so I deleted without reading. But I am taking control of my email and my time.

Here's what I am doing and maybe it will help you to waste less time in your business and to make more money!!

• I am ruthlessly unsubscribing to all but two of the coaching ezines.
• I am determinedly unsubscribing to all but one of the marketing ezines.
• I am tenaciously unsubscribing to all but one of the internet/multiple streams of income ezines.
• I am deleting everything not directly related to my business without reading it.
• When I decide to read an email or answer an email, I ask myself two questions (Learned this from the fabulous Andrea J. Lee at www.andreajlee.com), first, is this making me money? and second, what happens if I don't read or answer this email? Most of the time the answer will be: this is not making me money and nothing happens if I don't read it or answer it!

All blog content is copyrighted, all rights reserved, Mary Anne Fields and Life Unfolds, 2006